Confetti carrot-lemon salad

This is a classic little salad, one of the basics you’ll often find served at falafel stands and lunchtime restaurants. It’s a pleasant, simple creation with a sharp, fiery tang from lemon juice and raw garlic, along with a slight bitterness from the lemon peels.

You can make it by grating up some whole carrots, or, say, using the carrot cores left over from my stuffed carrot recipe. As a bonus, if you happen to use brightly colored carrots, then you’ll get a salad with a riot of color, which I guarantee you’ll never see at your neighborhood falafel shop.

These colored carrots can be purchased at the various farmer’s markets as well as at a few shops in Jaffa (and sometimes Ramle).

My version uses so-called Chinese lemons — those miniature fruits also known as limequats — which have particularly thin skins that lack the bitterness of their pithier, full-sized cousins.

Mix together all the ingredients. Let sit for about 15 minutes so the flavors can blend.

Regarding the lemon: Chinese lemons are sweet enough that you can use them whole, but larger, traditional lemons have a bitter pith. After squeezing them for juice, you’ll want to remove some of the zesty yellow outside with a vegetable peeler (it’s OK if you get some of the white pith) and chop up that along with the pulpy inside to get the 2 tablespoons called for in the recipe.

Fabulous idea to chop the mini lemons and use them to flavor the salad. In Southern California we have an abundance of kumquats right now. I can’t wait to start adding them to sweet and savory dishes. Great recipe, thanks!